Ottessa Moshfegh

2022

This book is truly captivating from the start. Over the time period of a year we get a look into the life of a young shepherd boy growing up during the medieval times, living with his father in the small village of Lapvona. This is a very Christian town. God seems to be the one thing any of the villagers actually believe as Lapvona had been wiped of its population many times. 

We start in the season of Spring, Marek, our 13 year old narrator, gives us a gruesome introduction. Bandits had visited the town again and "killed two men, three women and two small children”. He begins to go into detail about how the bandit was captured when the mother of the children had smashed his left foot with an axe. Marek lived with his father, Jude, a few miles from the center of the village. Jude was a lamb herder and lived a very simple life. He never changed his underwear in winter months because he feared feeling the cold, his diet consisted of bread, lambs milk, potatoes, wild grasses, apples and he held a deep hatred for Marek as he blamed him for the death of his beloved Agata and he hated how Marek looked. He was not an average kid, his body was disfigured and he looked odd to many of the villagers. The only one that seemed to be fond of him was his wet nurse, Ina. Ina was an elderly woman who lived a few miles from the villagers as well, she was blind and was thought to have mystical powers. She acted as a wet nurse for years, feeding newborns and watching them grow up to feed their newborns. She had helped Marek's mother, Agata, who had not died in childbirth like Jude had believed but rather ran away from the man who had stripped the last of her innocence. Marek loved his father, he listened to anything he said and accepted his beatings as he thought it would bring him closer to God. 

One day Marek wanders off into the forest, as he usually does, this time running into Jacob who was the lord of Lapvona's son. Jacob asks Marek to accompany him to some nearby cliffs. The two didn't necessarily seem to have a friendship, rather they seemed to tolerate each other to a certain extent. Once they reach the top of the cliff, Marek throws a rock at Jacob, throwing him off the edge as he falls to his death. Once this confession reaches Jude he's taken to the lord's manor where his punishment would be decided. The punishment? Lord Villiam had decided to trade sons, he would take Marek and Jude would take Jacob, who had no opposition towards the idea. As Marek settles into his new life he is brought into a whole new world he never knew existed. Full of false hopes and dreams, lies, sadness and pure delusion.

I loved this book, it often made me uncomfortable in many ways as the descriptive detail was making me feel way too imaginative but it was necessary to convey that emotion. I feel deeply for Marek and his mother, even for Jude for even if there wasn't innocence there at point and the environment, the need to be good for God seemed to crumble that.